Similar things happen on my system rather often... Following sequence is often
causing a problem, but not always;
1. Ctrl-Alt-F2, and the login shows up.
2. Login as a user
3. Start lynx and download a page.
4. Alt-F7 and KDE is back.
At this point, a new Ctrl-Alt-F2 will bring me back to the TTY. The mouse moves
across the screen but all applications are 'dead'.
Entering any key will prevent me from CTrl-Alt-F2 again. Ctrl-Shift-Backspace (or
whatever the combination is) stops X and X restarts.
While the X is hanged, lynx will continue its download, and I guess that all the
apps is actually running, but there is a deadlock somewhere in X or KDE.
Niclas
Ray Olszewski wrote:
> Mike, you're assuming too much. Not every Linux distribution defaults to
> having a VT on console 2. I've used some that will show a blank screen there.
>
> That said ... Michael, how do you know you were "locked out"? SOME key
> combination should have gotten you back to the VT you were on (if you were
> in X, it too runs on a VT). Did you try ALT-F1 through ALT-F9, all to no
> avail? (The CRTL-ALT-F* combinations are needed only in an X screen.) If you
> did all of this, still with no success, you have a more serious problem than
> what Mike and I have assumed, and you might want to describe your system
> (hardware and software) in a bit more detail so someone might make suggestions.
>
> To better understand what's going on, look in /etc/inittab and find out what
> runlevel your system defaults to (look for the line with the work
> "initdefault"). Then look for lines that have that number in the second
> field (fields are separated by colons in this file) to see what processes
> run at the default runlevel. Some will be lines like this:
>
> 2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
>
> The number in the "tty" entry at the end tells you which VT is running the
> process. "getty" (or a variant like "agetty" or "mgetty") tells you that the
> VT runs a login process; other things can run on VTs, but unless you have a
> truly unusual setup, you're not likely to encounter them ...
>
> ... with one exception: xdm. This is the process that provides login
> capabilities directly into X.
>
> Oh, to answer your actual question ... NO. Nobody -- beginner or not --
> should enter a command without knowing what it does ... especially someone
> working as root (even "rm -rf /*" won't wreck a system unless run by root).
>
> At 11:50 AM 1/25/00 -0500, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> >On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 10:38:13AM -0600, Mike Miller wrote:
> >> I did something stupid last night, I pressed ctrl-alt-F2 and totally
> >> locked up the machine. Actually it may not have been locked up,
> >> but I was locked out. The monitor went blank and the keyboard
> >> dead. Even the caps lock led was dead ! The only way I could
> >> recover was a hardware reset. Why did I do it? I mis-remembered
> >> something I'd read about switching from X to console.
> >
> > That should have put you on Console 2. You should have had
> >a login prompt there. Don't know why you would have just died. From
> >there <Alt><Fn> or <Cntrl><Alt><Fn> should take you to the various
> >virtual consoles with F1 being the first console. One of them (typically
> >F7 if you have 6 virtual consoles set up) should dump you back in X.
> >
> >> The question? Is there a list of commands that should never be
> >> issued by uninformed newbies?
> >
> > Things like...
> >
> > rm -rf /
>
> ------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
> Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
> Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
